KatharinaPelzelmayer, Dr.

Research

Katharina joined the Department of Geography as a research associate in September 2013. As part of the research project Dusk 2 Dawn, Katharina currently works on the concept of home through an examination of how young people characterise the home space in their nightlives.

From 2013-2017, Katharina worked on the Swiss National Science Foundation project Care Markets, which investigated individual elder care arrangements in Switzerland, generally referred to as "24-hour care". In her research, Katharina examined the particular ways in which 24-hour care has been discussed in the media, academic work and in public debate.

Completed in early 2017, Katharina's doctoral research shows how words can be powerful. For example, the media's specific use of the term "Care-Migrantin" to talk about mobile 24-hour care workers can serve to justify precarious working conditions and low pay. Her discourse analysis has been published in Gender, Place & Culture, Cities,Social & Cultural Geography and the Swiss Journal of Sociology.

Katharina is interested in:

theories of gender and power

gender and health

bodies and work

geographies of health and illness

feminist epistemologies and methodologies

Previous work at the University of Sheffield, the University of Aberdeen and the London School of Economics and Political Science has examined women's body image in the context of liberal democracy, contemporary activism in relation to feminist theory and the production of institutional knowledge about women in the Global South.